Wine as an Investment:
Understanding Fine Wine as an Asset Class
In our previous piece, we looked at what protects a collection over time. But for a growing number of collectors, wine isn't just something to drink or admire.
It's something to hold, to grow, and eventually, to realise.
So the next question is simple:
What does it actually take to treat wine seriously as an asset?
The years since the pandemic have told two very different stories for fine wine. Between 2020 and 2022, prices surged as collectors, flush with cash and confined to their homes, poured money into the market, certain the momentum would simply continue. I watched collectors buy aggressively at the top of that wave, convinced they'd timed the entrance perfectly.
Then came the correction. From 2022 through 2025, the market cooled hard, and by the end of 2025, the Liv-ex Fine Wine 100* sat almost 25% below its 2022 peak†. A collector who later became a client came to me wanting to sell part of his collection to fund another project. He had built a substantial position at the height of the boom. What he discovered wasn't just a softer market. It was that in a market like this, buyers get selective, and anything without impeccable storage, provenance, and documentation gets punished hardest of all. He hadn't mishandled a single bottle. But the paperwork and the conditions around his wine simply weren't strong enough to command confidence when confidence was already in short supply.
But for those who understood the fundamentals, storing properly, documenting rigorously, and holding genuine quality, the picture has begun to improve. The Liv-ex Fine Wine 100* is up 4.4% over the past twelve months, and its most recent monthly reading was also positive.
Fine Wine as an Asset Class for Investment Purposes
You get […] a physical asset that carries both emotional and financial value at once.
Fine wine behaves differently from most collectables because scarcity is built into it from the very first vintage. A great wine from a great producer is made once, in a fixed quantity, and that quantity only ever shrinks as bottles get opened around the world over the following decades. No amount of demand can bring back a 2015 or a 2005. It simply doesn't exist anymore once it's gone. Combine that permanent scarcity with critical scores, decades of price history, and an established secondary market, and you get something genuinely rare in the world of alternative investing: a physical asset that carries both emotional and financial value at once.
The numbers are worth putting next to the assets collectors already know, and the honest comparison is more instructive than a flattering one.
The Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index†, which tracks a broad basket of collectable categories including art, watches, and classic cars, rose 38.6% over the decade to 2025, though it closed 2025 down 0.4%, after two years of losses.
Fine wine's own benchmark, the Liv-ex Fine Wine 100*, has had a harder correction: down almost 25% from its 2022 peak, and 2.5% lower over 2025 alone†. Gold, meanwhile, remains the classic inflation hedge, but it produces no yield of its own. Its return depends entirely on price appreciation and how macro sentiment is moving in any given year.
What makes fine wine worth watching right now isn't a decade of flattering returns; it's that it is showing early signs of a turn. While the Knight Frank index closed 2025 slightly lower†, the Liv-ex Fine Wine 100* has risen 4.4% over twelve months and 2.1% year to date, with its latest monthly reading up 1.1%. The Acker Fine and Rare Index‡ tells a similar story from a different angle, rising 11.3% in the first quarter of 2026, which Acker ranks as its seventh-strongest quarter in nearly two decades of records. For collectors thinking in terms of timing and diversification, that combination of real scarcity, a market that appears to be stabilising, and early signs of renewed buying is worth paying attention to, though not something to chase blindly.
Reading the Market Cycle
Like any asset class, fine wine moves in cycles, and knowing where you sit in that cycle matters just as much as understanding the asset itself. The pandemic years produced a genuine boom; cash-rich collectors stuck at home between 2020 and 2022 poured money into the market, pushing prices to record highs on momentum alone rather than fundamentals. What followed was a real and necessary correction. From 2022 through 2025 the Liv-ex Fine Wine 100* cooled substantially, settling almost 25% below its 2022 peak† as speculative excess unwound and rising interest rates pulled capital toward safer yields elsewhere.
But corrections ease, and the picture heading through 2026 is one of a market finding its footing, even if unevenly. Within the Liv-ex Fine Wine 1000*, more individual vintages fell in price than rose over the second quarter of this year, yet the wines that did rise gained an average of 5.2%, outweighing the 4.1% average loss among fallers§. That is not a uniform rally. It points to a market where quality is being rewarded even while weaker positions continue to soften.
Demand is also visibly shifting. US buyers took a 26.9% share of global fine wine purchase value in the second quarter of 2026, up from 23.3% in the first quarter and above their 20.7% average across 2025, and paid an average of 1.1% above Market Price in the second quarter, against 0.03% in the first§. It suggests genuine buyers returning, rather than a market held up on paper.
This year's Bordeaux En Primeur campaign is a useful real-time illustration of exactly this kind of selectivity. Released into a cautious market, most of the 2025 vintage struggled to find buyers, but a small handful of names, Cheval Blanc, Margaux, Lafite, and Batailley, for example, were among the strongest releases with trade buyers¶. It's a pattern with precedent. Liv-ex's analysts compare the campaign with 2014: both followed years of ambitious pricing and a weak prior vintage, and both were released into a stabilising market. The 2014 pricing drew discontent at the time, yet with hindsight many in the trade would now say it was correctly priced¶. Reading a cycle well isn't about calling the bottom. It's about recognising that even in a difficult release, the wines that matter tend to reveal themselves early.
What Protects Your Investment
Beyond the wine itself, the structure surrounding an investment determines how much of its return you actually keep. This is where bonded warehouse storage becomes relevant. Wine held in bond remains exempt from VAT and duty until the moment it's withdrawn for consumption, and since investment-grade wine is typically bought, stored, and eventually sold while remaining in bond the entire time, most investors never trigger those taxes at all, which can meaningfully improve net returns compared to wine stored outside that system.
London has traditionally been the reference point for this, and for a Swiss-based collector, Switzerland's own Ports Francs operate on a similar underlying principle, though the two aren't simply interchangeable. What tax and duty treatment actually applies depends on a wine's origin, destination, ownership, and how it moves between jurisdictions, so the detail is always worth confirming for a given bottle rather than assuming. In Geneva's case, the scale is genuinely remarkable regardless: the Geneva Freeport is home to what's often called the world's largest wine cellar, close to three million bottles held under bond, alongside similar facilities elsewhere in the country.
For clients building or holding a collection with Switzerland as their base, storing locally rather than abroad also means one clearance event instead of two when the wine eventually comes home, simpler, faster, and closer to hand.
There's also a liquidity advantage built into this structure, wherever it's held. Buyers on the secondary market consistently favour wine that has never left bonded storage, since continuous professional storage helps preserve an auditable chain of custody and reduces condition and handling risk. It doesn't eliminate that risk; warehouse reputation, insurance, inspection standards, and documentation still matter as much as the fact of bonded status itself. But for an asset where resale value depends so heavily on trust and verified history, staying in bond remains one of the clearest ways to preserve the kind of provenance serious buyers are willing to pay a premium for.
What to Look For Before You Invest
Not every fine bottle qualifies as an investment. This is where I see collectors make their most expensive mistakes: buying based on a single high score or a prestigious name, without checking whether the wine actually behaves like an asset. Before treating a bottle as something to hold rather than simply drink, a few questions are worth asking:
Does this producer have a consistent critical track record across a decade or more of vintages, not just one exceptional year that happened to catch attention?
Is there real secondary market activity for this wine — listed on Liv-ex, traded at auction, with genuine price history — or would you be among the first ever trying to resell it?
Where does the current asking price sit relative to its historical trading range? Buying at the top of a hype cycle, the way many did during the 2020 to 2022 boom, is very different from buying with room to grow.
Is the provenance verifiable from the point of purchase onward, or are you relying on trust alone?
Does this fit into a diversified position, or does it concentrate everything into one region, one producer, one vintage?
Bordeaux's blue-chip names will always have a place in a serious collection. Their liquidity and track record are unmatched. But some of the strongest growth over the past decade has come from sparkling wine and whites, and from producers outside the traditional handful of household names. A collection built entirely around familiar labels isn't necessarily a safer one; it's often simply a less diversified one.
This is exactly the kind of judgment call that benefits from a second, informed opinion before money changes hands, not after.
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A note on risk: Fine wine is a tangible and illiquid collectable. Its value may fall as well as rise, and a buyer may not always be available when an owner wishes to sell. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. Storage, insurance, currency movements, taxes, duties and selling costs can materially affect returns. This article provides general information and does not constitute personalised financial, legal or tax advice.
Sources and notes
* Liv-ex Fine Wine 100: the industry benchmark index, representing the price movement of 100 of the most sought-after fine wines on the secondary market, calculated from Liv-ex Mid Prices. The readings quoted (+4.4% over twelve months, +2.1% year to date, +1.1% month on month) are as displayed on Liv-ex's indices page when accessed on 14 October 2026; the page does not state an as-of date. The Liv-ex Fine Wine 1000 tracks 1,000 wines from across the world and is Liv-ex's broadest measure of the market.
† Knight Frank, Luxury Investment Index, Wealth Report 2026: +38.6% over the decade to 2025 and -0.4% in 2025, after two years of losses. The same report cites the Liv-ex Fine Wine 100 at -2.5% in 2025 and almost 25% below its 2022 peak.
‡ Acker, Markets Report Q1 2026: the Acker Fine and Rare Index rose 11.3% in the first quarter of 2026, which Acker ranks as its seventh-strongest quarter in nearly two decades of recorded history.
§ Liv-ex second-quarter 2026 market data (Fine Wine 1000 price movements, US buyers' share of purchase value, premium to Market Price), as reported by Vinetur, 15 July 2026. Liv-ex's market reports are available from liv-ex.com.
¶ Bordeaux 2025 En Primeur: Vinetur's summary of Liv-ex's campaign analysis, 30 June 2026, and Liv-ex market analyst reflections on en primeur, 2 July 2026.
Bringing It Together
Treating wine as a genuine asset class means holding three things at once:
The fundamentals that make it a legitimate investment
The discipline to read where you sit in the market cycle
The structural choices, like bonded storage, that protect the return you've actually earned.
Miss any one of those and a collection rests on hope rather than judgment. Get all three right, and fine wine can sit comfortably within a considered collection plan, with recent data pointing to a market that is stabilising.
If you're building or reviewing a collection with investment in mind, I help clients in three concrete ways:
Assessing whether individual bottles or existing holdings genuinely qualify as investment-grade
Structuring storage and bond arrangements that protect value rather than erode it
Building a diversified position rather than a concentrated bet on familiar names.
Get in touch before you buy, not after.
Together, we figure out your why, and then we build a strategy, based on sourcing, storage, and timing, that makes sense for your collection.
I adapt my advisory services to each client. I don't follow a technical sheet. Every single one of my members receives very personalised consulting, all my attention, and I make sure your wines are selected as precisely and carefully as I would do for my own collection.
Contact me to begin a confidential conversation about your collection, or subscribe to receive the next article in the series.
Want to explore the world of fine wine with genuine expertise?
At Paroles de Vins, I offer private wine consulting, curated tastings, and exclusive wine experiences for collectors, investors, and hospitality professionals who demand more than a label. → Visit parolesdevins.com to discover our services → Follow @TonyLcrx_MS on Instagram for field dispatches from the world's great wine regions → Contact: info@parolesdevins.com |
About the Author
Tony Lécuroux MS
Tony Lécuroux is a Master Sommelier, one of fewer than 300 in the world to hold this distinction, and the 2nd Best Sommelier of Switzerland 2025.
I am the founder of Paroles de Vins, a wine advisory & Wine Concierge company, also creating events based in Switzerland.
I am also a certified lecturer of Wine Education Switzerland, delivering ISG certification programmes across the country.
Having spent a decade working in Michelin-starred restaurants across England and Switzerland, I now work with private clients, estates, and hospitality groups across Europe and beyond.
I grew up near Hermitage in the Northern Rhône Valley, a place that continues to shape my understanding of what wine, at its best, can be.
This article reflects Tony's personal vision and field experience, and does not represent the position of any commercial partner or institution.
The other articles in this series walk you through the practical mechanics: where to source with confidence, how to store properly, how to house your collection as it grows. But none of that matters until you've answered this question first.
So ask yourself: am I building for pleasure, for legacy, for investment, or some mix of all three? Once you know, everything else becomes clearer.
Other articles of the Series
Why You Collect: Already published
Storage & Long-Term Vision: Already published
Where to Buy: Already published
Wine as an Investment: This article
Revisiting Your Strategy: To be published
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